The online journal of a crusty, longwinded trial lawyer, bemused observer of politics, and internet dilettante

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Woulda, coulda, shoulda

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds points out that while he "understand[s] Democrats [now] wishing" that they’d nominated Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama in 2008, "her performance as Secretary of State has been something less than stellar."

I agree, but would add:

If the GOP had only nominated my guy in 2008 instead of McCain, he'd not only have beaten Obama and then restored financial sanity to the United States government, but when our intelligence agencies finally tracked down bin Laden, he'd have personally commanded the aircraft carrier from which bin Laden's corpse was fed to the fishes.

I wrote in 2007 that "I'm convinced that whether it's Hillary, Obama, or Edwards, the Dems are going to feel serious buyers' remorse on the day after their nominee is finally decided." I didn't predict, however, that they'd be still be feeling such serious remorse, or rather, even more serious remorse, in 2011.

As things are, this business has gotten out of control, and we'll be lucky to live through it.

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Comments

My first runner-up as a closing line for this post: "Harry Reid don't take a dump, son, without a plan." But I think that actually gives Reid too much credit.

"Why, Beldar," you may reasonably ask, "did you not crop from that photo of Fred Thompson the image at the far right of the actor who, in real life, has been a despicable verbal abuser of his own pre-teen daughter, and who continues to be one of the leading Hollywood asshats who pretends to know a lot about politics?" For one reason only: The character whom he played in that movie — who is, indeed, the central character in Tom Clancy's series of spy books and the other movies made from them — has the same surname of my guy for this year's GOP nomination (see the sidebar at the right). It's a good Irish surname, too good to be sullied even by that particular piece of actor-scum at the far right.

I enjoyed Fred Thompson's performance in The Hunt For Red October. I also liked his playing the DA in Law and Order, but by far I prefer his performance as a Senator on CSPAN. Wait, you mean that was real life?

I agree he would have made a good PotUS, but I want to point out that I don't think he would have had the momentum / support to make the changes needed for long term fixes.

As rude as it is to say, this catastrophe we are experiencing is motivating more citizens to become active and engaged. No change could have come from just replacing the actors in Washington. For this country's financial situation to be truly righted, we need more voters active in politics. That sort of 'call to action' doesn't seem to happen with humans until things are at the edge of collapse.

I think Reagan showed that one great man cannot fix D.C.. In his final SotU, he had a thick stack of papers that represented the Federal Budget and he pleaded with Congress to not create such a mammoth document. Yet they continued to do so, even creating larger monsters for non-budget bills (cf. Health Care Bill).

I think this parable sums it up nicely, albeit painfully:
"Sometimes a broken bone is better than a sprain - it heals faster."

The next Republican president should insist that no member of Congress and no officer of any regulatory agency will be admitted to any White House function unless he is personally carrying a printed copy of the Federal budget, or if there is no budget(!), a copy of the most recent.

For Fred Thompson to have won the Republican Nomination in 2008, he would have had to have run for it. You'd have a hard time convincing me that he actually did. Failing to show up for the first couple caucus/primaries is not the sign of a serious candidate.

Fred was My Guy as well. At the time, I noted that in the early Southern primaries, the Brain Dead Branch of of the SBC was duped into falling for the 'Huckster' which allowed McCain to slide by: sucking up delegates with mere pluralities of the vote. I think Fred saw this as well, probably earlier than I did, and becasue he's smarter than most, he pulled the plug.

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